Your Right to Know

WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are trying to find a way to reopen the
government, which has been partially shut down for two weeks, and beat a Thursday deadline to raise
the federal debt ceiling.

Q: What’s going on right now?

A: Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are on the cusp of a deal to reopen the
government and avoid breaching that Thursday deadline.

Q: When will they announce the deal?

A: If all goes well, today.

Q: What will the deal involve?

A: Things were still in flux last night, but it looked likely to have five main
parts:

• Immediately reopen the government and fund it through Jan. 15.

• Immediately raise the debt limit through Feb. 15.

• Require additional safeguards to ensure that people who receive federal subsidies to purchase
health insurance under the new health-care law are eligible to receive them.

• Delay for two years the health-care law’s “belly-button tax” — a roughly $63-per-person
insurance tax that would have affected labor unions and big employers.

• Set up a negotiating committee to come up with a longer-term budget plan so we don’t go
through this again early next year. The committee will be expected to issue recommendations by Dec.
13 and, should it fail, agencies would have more flexibility to implement the deep spending cuts
known as sequestration.

Q: When would the government open and the crisis end?

A: As soon as Congress passes the deal and President Barack Obama signs it.

Q: When will the deal pass the Senate?

A: As soon as today, if all senators agree. If a single senator refuses to allow
an immediate vote on the measure, it could take several days.

Q: Will the deal pass the House?

A: Hard to say. If House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester, allows a quick vote, it could
happen any time, likely with the support of most Democrats and a substantial number of Republicans.
If House Republicans delay or seek to amend the Senate bill, it could take longer.

Q: How long do lawmakers have to get the deal done?

A: Thursday is the day when the government no longer can borrow money and
basically will be running on fumes.

After the debt-ceiling deadline is breached, the Treasury Department might have to delay or
suspend Social Security checks, food stamps and tens of billions of dollars in other payments.

It could take a few days, or maybe a week or two, but soon enough there would be major
problems.

The Treasury would have only daily tax receipts to pay for the government — which amount to only
70 cents for every dollar of federal spending over the next month. And that could cause financial
market chaos and a recession.

Q: Once this crisis is over, what happens next?

A: Well, per the likely agreement, Republicans and Democrats would assign
lawmakers to a conference committee to hash out a broader budget plan for the coming year.

For Democrats and Republicans alike, the basic question will be whether they find a way to roll
back sequestration, which is scheduled to launch a new round of budget cuts in January.

Democrats hate sequestration, because it’s the opposite of the domestic investment they’ve
campaigned on. Republicans are more ambivalent, but many in the GOP don’t like how deeply it cuts
Pentagon spending.

A bigger budget deal — the elusive “grand bargain” — could also be considered as part of the
conference. But any significant changes to mandatory spending usually leads Democrats to insist on
new taxes, which has been a deal-breaker for the GOP.